Westinghouse soon may have to answer to lawmakers for its role in SC’s failed project

Westinghouse has been commanded to explain its role in a failed nuclear construction project that has cost S.C. power customers billions of dollars.

The S.C. House’s special nuclear committee is demanding that officials of Westinghouse, the lead contractor of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion, come to South Carolina to testify at a March 21 hearing. The company, which filed for bankruptcy last year, has been relatively silent since the Summer project went belly up last July.

The House also wants access to Westinghouse’s project file, including “any and all documents and records related to the procurement, design, engineering, construction, and abandonment of the project, and all contracts or agreements related to or addressing the project,” according to a Monday letter from two committee leaders.

“This committee is tasked with further investigation and review of the issues surrounding the project on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of South Carolina ratepayers who have been paying a premium for the failed project,” wrote state Reps. Peter McCoy, R-Charleston, and Russell Ott, D-Calhoun. “Accordingly, this investigation necessarily requires a complete and thorough review of Westinghouse and its role in the project.”

Ott told The State the committee wants to compare Westinghouse’s testimony with that of executives of SCE&G and Santee Cooper, the two S.C. power companies that owned the reactor construction project. Those two utilities mostly have blamed Westinghouse for the cost overruns and construction delays that, they say, led to its abandonment.

SCE&G has said the project still would be alive if Westinghouse had not filed for bankruptcy. That bankruptcy followed Westinghouse’s conclusion that its cost to complete the reactors had soared past what it would be paid by SCE&G and Santee Cooper.

“We should hear their side of the story,” Ott said of Westinghouse.

The March 21 hearing would be Westinghouse’s first appearance before either of the State House’s two special nuclear committees.

SCE&G, Santee Cooper, the state’s electric cooperatives, state utility regulators and concerned S.C. residents already have testified to those committees about the nuclear debacle, which cost the two utilities more than $9 billion.

In its letter, the House threatened to hold Westinghouse in contempt if it doesn’t appear.

A Westinghouse spokesman said the company had received the House’s request and was reviewing it Tuesday afternoon.

This story was originally published February 27, 2018 at 10:06 AM with the headline "Westinghouse soon may have to answer to lawmakers for its role in SC’s failed project."